Friday, October 19, 2012

Remembering Shivaram Karanth

It was in
the mid 60’s. My father was invited to give a talk either in Puttur or
Mangalore. The man who had invited him was none other than the polymath Shivaram
Karanth. He was already familiar to me through his encyclopaedic works in
Kannada. Though I had read little, I had devoured all the pictures in that
book. I meekly put in an application to my father that I wanted to go with him.
In retrospect, I am amazed that he agreed to take me along, after he sought the
permission of Karanth. Those were the days before the telephone, so to say. The
unendurable anticipation ended when Karanth said I was welcome and soon we were
off.

The magic
element started soon after we left Mysore by bus – I saw a mongoose cross the
road in front of the speeding bus. I screamed in excitement and went red in the
face when the whole bus turned to look at me.

Karanth had
sent a car to the bus stand to pick us up. When we reached his house, I gaped open
mouthed when I saw Karanth come out in kacche panche and banian. In my childish
imagination, he was always dressed in a full kurta as in the photographs I had
seen.

His house
had two parts. An older Mangalore tiled part and a newer brick and concrete
roofed structure standing a little apart from the older part. I was sleepy soon
after dinner, in the older part of his two part house. We soon moved towards
the newer part before which Karanth lit a cigarette and smoked, sitting on the
steps leading to it. When we entered the building my mouth fell open. The walls
were lined on all four sides with hundreds of issues of National Geographic
magazine. There must have been a thousand other books there but all I could see
was the golden yellow!

Soon,
Karanth explained the sleeping arrangements: Lakshmana Rao and I will sleep in
this hall. Anila will sleep in the next room on the tiger skin. In the night
the tiger will wake up and kachch (kachchu in Kannada means to bite) him. Now
this was a revelation! How can such a great man indulge in such jokes? Such
thoughts were drowned in the fear of the impossible happening! I peeped into
the next room and there was indeed a huge tiger skin on the floor with its
mouth wide open and glassy eyes staring straight ahead, fortunately, away from
me. He told my father how it came to be but I do not remember it since I was
staring at a large framed oil colour canvas, perhaps 2m by 3m, resting against
a wall. Years later, when I first saw a picture of a Gauguin, it reminded me of
that painting. Was it Karanth’s himself? Or was it a Hebbar?

Thankfully,
I did not have to sleep in that room alone and we slept on beds spread on the
floor and quite close to my father.

The next
morning, at breakfast he introduced us to his daughter who came to serve us,
“she is my daughter, kShAmadevi….” (Thanks to the simple transliteration in
English, the name could be pronounced with the first vowel short or long. When
short, it means goddess of mercy or pardon and when long it means goddess of
famine!) The item she had come to serve was a dark brown/black halwa with ghee
oozing from it. He instructed me, “ತಿನ್ನಯ್ಯಾ ss ss s, it is genuine Indiyaaa rubber” in a theatrical style and voice.

He later asked me, “ಏನಯ್ಯಾ ನೀನೇನು ನೋಡ್ಬೇಕು? ಮಂಗಳೂರಿಗೆ ಹೋಗಿ ಅರಬ್ಬೀ ಸಮುದ್ರ ನೋಡ್ಬೇಕೋ? ಕಾರ್ಕಳಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋಗಿ ಗೊಮ್ಮಟನ್ನ ನೋಡ್ಬೇಕೋ? (My man, what do you want to see? Go to Mangalore and Arabian Sea or got to KarkaLa and Gommateswara) I chose Mangalore and the sea. And that is what we
did. On the way there, he challenged me, “ನೀನು ಇಂಜಿನಿಯರ್ ಆಗಿ ಪುತ್ತೂರಿನಿಂದ ಮಂಗಳೂರಿಗೆ ಹೋಗೋ ರಸ್ತೇನ ನೆಟ್ಟಗೆ ಮಾಡಿದರೆ ನಿನಗೆ ನೊಬೆಲ್ ಪ್ರೈಜ್ ಕೊಡಿಸ್ತೀನಿ.” (If you study
Engineering and straighten the road from Puttur to Mangalore, I will get you a
Nobel Prize) Unfortunately, I never took up
the challenge.

As with childhood memories,
perhaps aided by some of these things recounted by father later, my memories
stop there. I have some visual memories of the lay of the land near his house, his
fair shiny hairless shoulder and upper arm peeping out of the banian, the
remarkable twinkle in his eyes which would suddenly disappear when deep in
thought and so on.

I write all this to show how
childlike he was while dealing with me as a boy – a facet of a great man that
hardly ever gets described.

Note: This was written on Karanth's 110th birthday - this year - 10th October.

Anil, I bumped into this [nice] post. His looks somehow resembled that of Einstein, with that mush. An elderly friend of mine who also had the privilege of his acquaintance used to tell me that Karanthajja never locked his house. It appears that he if someone needs anything they may take away. In Deccan Herald some yrs ago there was a short write-up on him and accompanied by a short letter he wrote to a young girl in his family. He had mixed drawings and words to make it impressive. I have that clipping. There may be a book about a collection of his letters. My friend also used to tell about his simplicity.